You might call Axel Dorner a photographer's trumpeter. In photography, playing with perspective comes with the territory. At the asymptotes, techniques like extreme closeup can present new worlds to be discovered in a proverbial blade of grass. But radical re-framing of this kind is much rarer in music. While, clearly, extended techniques challenge our expectations of how particular instruments sound (and, of course, what music is) these techniques usually appear in familiar auditory settings. A guitar, for example, although strummed with an egg beater, usually still occupies its expected ambient context as an instrument in an ensemble, on a stage, in a room, etc.

Consider, by contrast, Dorner's solo in the opening moments of "Prologue: Dornotomie." As the title perhaps suggests, the listener is placed in the belly of the trumpet, instead of her usual position in a virtual chair in the audience. Dorner uses the "extreme close up" of amplification to make this possible. Just as unseen landscapes emerge in a blown-up photograph, this amplification reveals all the alveoli, sinuses, and capillaries of Dorner's trumpet. Almost paradoxically, these minutiae seem to enlarge the sound of the instrument. Its frequency profile widens exponentially, allowing this merely acoustic instrument to go toe-to-toe with the palettes only electronic musicians usually explore.

But Art Transplant is no single-minded dissertation on the extended trumpet. It is an ensemble record to its core. In fact, the contrasts between the giddy, swinging, seat-of-your-pants Eurojazz, and the instrument dissections that take place during many of the solos can be almost jarring.

"Prologue: Dornotomie" begins with one such solo by Dorner before blasting into a jaunty head and, later, some Cecil Taylor-esque, omni-rhythmic group interplay. Similarly, consider "Moccasino." The theme is an off-kilter syncopated line, something like slightly tipsy Latin jazz. By the time the band really digs into the improv section, though, this theme seems light years away. In Dorner's solo, his lines sprout hair that grows until they become as dense as forests. The rest of the band gets pulled into the sonic exploration, to their credit, and the jazzy feel of the head has been utterly sloughed. By the end of the journey, it almost seems a disappointment when the head returns, and we drop back to Earth.

Bassist Ole Morten Vagan gets into the Dornereaque feel in the opening section of "Korean Barbecue Smokeout" digging into the bristles of his bow and the complex harmonics of the strings. For several minutes he carves out huge chunks of timbre and peals of exploration. Then, abruptly, we are thrust into the composed section of the piece — at least for a moment, until the next chance for improvisation emerges.

Ultimately, Art transplant is quite a mixture, in a positive sense of that term. There is some fine jazz composition here — the lilting thirds of "Krakatau" embody perhaps my favorite motif on the disk, for example. Structurally, there are surprises throughout. But really, this album is all about the magnificent solos, of which there are plenty.